Three Months
by talkofcake
Summary: She wanted to walk right up to him and strike her superior officer for doing this to her, for torturing her for three months only to have given his heart to someone else. JS, tag to 100 Days.


Title: Three Months

Author: Justine

Rating: K+ for language and innuendo

Pairings: Jack/Sam

Spoilers: tag to 100 Days

Disclaimer: Not mine! I'm only borrowing them and promise to return them back where I found them with little to no damage done.

Three Months  
By Justine

It seemed her heart had stopped, her breath caught in her throat when she realized that after the long three months of being without him, she may finally have him back. That feeling alone began tears to arise in the pools behind her lashes, saltiness stinging her eyes and threatening to journey down her cheeks. But she held it all back, deciding that if he were there, she would have remained strong for him.

And that had been her motivation the past three months. _If he were here…_

She had lied to Janet. Not completely, because she did miss him—God, did she miss him—but when agreeing that it wasn't a problem, implying that it wouldn't be either, it had most-definitely been a lie. It was a good problem and therefore a good lie however, because his missing presence motivated her to work as fast as she could on as many sleepless nights as her fatigued body would allow. Three months had never been anywhere near her ideal time frame, and had she been able to do anything to speed up the process, God knows she would have. Unfortunately, after the first couple of weeks, her sleep-deprived body would no longer run on a few minutes of shuteye here and there and eight cups of black coffee, falling pray to exhaustion. Janet had, of course, insisted she go straight to the infirmary, and when she resisted, General Hammond ordered it.

"You're no good to us with tired eyes," he said, placing his hand on her shoulder. "We'll find him, Major."

And they had found him—right in the arms of another woman. Butterflies had instantly been replaced with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. And this was all her fault; had she been able to complete the particle beam—his lifeline—faster, Jack O'Neill would not have given up hope of ever returning home and thus would have never taken the time to fall in love.

It was selfish really, blaming it all on herself. Perhaps he had never seen her the way that she had been slowly realizing she saw him. Three months apart, while it proved to work oppositely for him, had only revealed what she had been denying because of protocol and regulations. There were, after all, a hundred reasons why she couldn't feel anything more than appropriate for him, but like her father had once told her when her first boyfriend had moved away to college, 'distance makes us wise.' It was distance that would either make or break a relationship, and Sam had decided somewhere between General Hammond officially declaring Jack MIA and finishing her means of saving him that she needed to let the Colonel know, albeit subtly, how she felt the moment she had him back.

But her heart sank upon seeing the mixed emotions flush over him of leaving this newfound love on an alien planet and returning home. Mixed emotions found their way into her heart too, because as much as she was jealous and heartbroken, she wanted to walk right up to him and strike her superior officer for doing this to her, for torturing her for three months only to have given his heart to someone else.

Unfortunately, the latter emotion chose to emerge itself once back at the SGC. Fortunately, the abuse was only verbal—for the time being.

"What the _hell_ were you thinking?"

She stormed into the locker room, slamming the door behind her, and found him very shirtless, very wet, and very surprised. And just for kicks, she had worn a tank top, granted, not the 'sweet, little' one she'd apparently worn two years ago upon sexually attacking him under the influence of some disease, but it was an upgrade from her normal military attire which she hoped he'd notice.

He did.

"Hello, Sam," he said, not quite sure what else to say. "I see you missed me."

"Cut the crap, sir. You're gone _three months_ and you already forget about all of us here at home? Did you honestly think we'd give up on you that easily? With all due respect sir, do you know how insulting that is?"

She crossed her arms over her chest and left very little space between them. Her eyes were on fire, her cheeks flushed, and overall, Samantha Carter appeared to be very pissed off.

"With _all due respect_?" he asked in disbelief. "I think we lost respect, _Major_, the moment you set foot in the men's locker room, shouting profanities at your commanding officer."

"You just _gave up_ on us! How could you do that? After all we've been through, us—the team! Teal'c and Daniel!" She stopped, her eyes narrowed and brow knit, breath heavy. "What the hell were you thinking?" she repeated.

"Carter, you are way out of line here, you know that?"

"Stop dodging questions, _sir_," she spat.

"Alright, you want to know what I was thinking?" he asked, challenging her and taking a step into her space. "I was _thinking_ that after two months of waiting around, trying to manually find the Stargate under only God knows how many feet of rubble, it would be better to try to adjust then to live the rest of my life as some depressed homeless…person! I'm sorry, Major, that I found some happiness along the way," he said scathingly.

"Do you realize how much time we spent—_I _spent—trying to figure out a way to get you back? Three months, sir. Three months of sleep deprivation, malnutrition, and whatever the hell else is a direct result of slaving away in that lab testing out ways to bring you home!"

"You think _you_ suffered?" he asked, jabbing his pointer finger inches away from her face. "Last time I checked, Major, you weren't the one stranded on some alien planet with no possible means of returning home!"

"Well it doesn't exactly look like you had the worst time of your life!" she fired back.

"And what is that supposed to mean?" he yelled.

"We get there, so happy to have you back, and what are you doing? You're making out with some woman without as much as a 'thank you, Sam, for rescuing me'."

"Carter, do you have any idea what it was like to be on that planet for three months? Do you have any _clue_ what that might have been like?" he asked, his voice loud enough to penetrate the walls. "So excuse me if I wasn't exceptionally grateful."

"Gratitude," she muttered. "Dammit! How about some sort of sign that you were at least happy to see us! Moving on is one thing, but you'd think I never meant a thing to you!"

Both of them stopped and she bit her lip. Her mistake had not gone unnoticed by either of them.

"We," she said quietly and looked at the floor, "as if _we_ never meant a thing to you."

He would have liked to smile, but his mind was frantically all over the place and his stomach churned with regret and sorrow and so many overwhelming emotions.

"Again," he continued, softening his tone in sympathy for her obvious embarrassment, "I don't think you realize what these last three months have been like for me."

"And I don't think you realize what they've been like for me, sir," she said, returning her eyes to meet his, albeit hesitantly.

There was a long moment of silence between them. It wasn't uncomfortable because the way his eyes scanned her face and the corner of his lips turned up flooded her with warmth which she hoped she could only return equally with her own expression.

"I'm not sure what to say first," he said, his smirk growing more apparent. "I'm sorry, thank you, or I missed you." She laughed in response, shaking her head and returning her gaze back to the ground beneath her. He smiled, leaning his shoulder against the locker then looking at her seriously. "Sam, I want you to know that there wasn't a day that went by that I didn't think about you and the others. Just because I started to move on didn't mean that you weren't on my mind."

She nodded, taking in a breath. "I'm sorry, too. I jumped to too many conclusions. I guess that, I don't know, sir, I expected you to be so happy to see us that it never occurred to me you may have found something hard to leave behind during those three months."

"Come here," he said, wrapping his arm around her shoulder and pulling her body into his warm embrace. She sighed, inhaling deeply into his shoulder. They both seemed to realize that he was still only half-clothed at once and withdrew from the embrace grinning.

"You aren't going to charge me with insubordination, are you, sir?"

"Well, Carter," he replied, reaching for his black shirt, "I was thinking more like sexual harassment." He nodded towards his bare chest. "You do have a way of picking the ideal times to, uh, discuss the most important matters with me."

She let out something resembling a snort and looked down in embarrassment as he pulled the shirt over his head and reached inside the neckline to extract his dog tags.

"We debrief…" Jack glanced at his watch, "…five minutes ago, huh?"

As if being interrupted from a daze, Sam jumped and looked at the clock on the wall. "Uh…yes, sir."

"Sweet," he said, shutting his locker. "I've kept you guys waiting for three months, what the hell is another five minutes?"

She moved to open the door to the locker room with him right behind her. They walked down the hall and towards Hammond's office in silence for a while before he broke out in a whistle causing whatever thoughts she'd been dwelling on to shatter.

"Sir?" she asked, and he glanced at her.

"Carter?"

"You might want to know—your living quarters were converted into a guest room while you were gone."

He stopped walking and looked at her retreating form incredulously. "You're kidding."

She grinned and looked back at him.

"You'd be surprised what can go down in three months, Colonel."

"I guess." He started walking after her again before letting out a chuckle. "Next I suppose you're going to tell me I've been replaced by Colonel Maybourne." He chuckled again, only stopping when he realized she wasn't laughing with him. "Carter?" he paused and asked, looking at her in disbelief. Again, she kept on walking. "Hey, Carter! Wait a sec!"

Sam turned around, her hand on the door. "We're late for the de-briefing." She smiled and disappeared through the door, leaving Colonel Jack O'Neill speechless in his place.

"Maybourne, you son of a bitch," he murmured before entering the room after Carter.


End file.
